


Wasteland, Baby

by GothicGirl_1331



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-09 20:08:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,506
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27952085
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GothicGirl_1331/pseuds/GothicGirl_1331
Summary: Trauma and reconciliation
Relationships: James Barnes/SteveRogers
Kudos: 5





	Wasteland, Baby

Steve groaned and shifted, off-kilter and sluggish; faintly, he’s aware of resilient, tight restraints that keep him face down on the bed- at least he thinks it’s a bed- cold air brushing over places it shouldn’t, sending goose pimples across his skin.  
A door opens from across the room, and a few different sets of footsteps enter, only one going right up to him and smacking his cheek lightly. 

“Wakey wakey, Stevie~” Rumlow sang, groping his ass roughly. “It’s play time. Got a new friend for you, too.”

He can hear a total of three sets of footsteps, but so far only Rumlow had come close to him. He tries not to think too heavily about what he knows is going to come next as the mattress dips to the side of him, but after months of being here, it didn’t really matter. Unceremoniously, three cold, but thankfully slick fingers are shoved deep into him, not to pleasure him but to prep him and make sure there wouldn’t be a repeat of the internal injuries from the first night they’d had him after they’d falsely arrested him and taken him here.

Sharp words were exchanged in- Russian, maybe German?- and then two sets of footsteps left; the room was eerily silent, and he jerked away from the hand that grazed his shoulder, slowly making its way up to his head. Rather than the rough grip he tensed for, the fingers brushed through his hair softly, almost pleasantly. It hurt worse than anything they’d done, and he wanted to sob. “Just get it over with...”

The words creaked from his throat like rusted hinges, but still the gentle touch didn’t stop.

“I-“ the thick accent almost makes the words unintelligible, but the achingly familiar tenor causes him to still. “Will not hurt you... Not like them...”

He does cry then, pulling futilely at the bonds as he fights to contain himself, his reaction. Slowly, he forces his head to turn, and the sob that punched its way from his chest was barely a puff of a painful breath. He wanted to reach out, to feel for himself that he wasn’t hallucinating, but he could only look and cry quietly. “Bucky....”

The other man just sat there and pet him, his stormy eyes focused up ahead on the door to the room. It felt like decades passed in the silence before anything else happens. He flinches as hands find the latches to release him, curling in on himself once he’s free; Bucky sits him up and finds the shirt and sweats he’d been taken in, dressing him without fuss while his limbs were still numb from disuse and sluggish blood flow.

“What-“

“Quiet.” The brunet stood and placed himself between the blond and the door, the plates in his prosthetic arm whirring softly. When the door opened, the first two men to try to enter got a vibranium-steel fist through their orbital sockets, and the wet crunch brings Steve to his feet, weak but unwilling to go quietly. He struggles with one, wrestling a high voltage baton from them and taking some satisfaction in watching the sparking electrodes sink into the man’s temple, frying his brain.

He takes down another one as Bucky mows through them, stumbling after him through the halls. Somewhere along the way, they found a car, and he was unceremoniously shoved into the back seat before his companion slid into the driver’s seat and messed about with the wiring before it started up, peeling away from the complex that was rapidly coming alive in the rear view mirror. It felt like ages before there was no longer a line of sight to the ones after them and he slumped to lay his head on the seat, closing his eyes. “Need to ditch this thing; something without a GPS in it.”

Bucky responds in Russian, or maybe German, but a few hours later they trade the black town car for a grey work van and they’re gone again; a sign on the shoulder reads “Safe Travels,” and the one after that “Marlow 163.” He curls up on one end of the bench seat, watching the blur of the scenery.

At a rest stop around Tucumcari, he locks himself in the single person bathroom and does his best to shower at the sink, scrubbing and scalding himself until his skin is raw and painful; his stomach churns when he looks in the mirror, and that’s when he hurried out, back to the van after Bucky, who’d refilled the tank and gotten some waters and food for them.

He barely remembers being dropped off at Stark’s obnoxious tower, and only has the vaguest idea of what happened between drugged bouts of sleep, and they only told him he’d been missing for about three months at first. Then, as more and more came up to the surface, they had to reveal more and more. He’d been snatched from his morning route by his former STRIKE team, who’d been more or less functioning under Hydra to their own ends, and they’d kept him to themselves until deciding that they’d need to let the cat out of the bag somehow, and it’d’d all gone to bits from there, at least for Rumlow and his crew. He took it all in with a soldier’s mask in place, but learning the extent of the damage they’d done was awful; bones broken so badly and often that they’d have to shave down the new growth and re-break to fix them; internal tears and punctures from being repeatedly assaulted; forced anorexia that had begun edging into the beginnings of his body breaking itself down; he was just one extra awful day away from the end of his life, but was still breathing thanks entirely to someone whom he’d thought dead in years gone past.

Someone who was currently being detained and interrogated by SHIELD agents in a basement facility at Stark’s middle finger to the rest of the cityscape around it; Steve wasn’t so weak that he couldn’t voice his dissent as often and loud as he could handle, though the volume belonged less to a commander, and more to someone in the library most days, and he was, mostly, ignored, at least until Natasha came back.

“-‘s horse shit, Nat. He /saved/ me-“ he stares out the window with tired eyes. “He’s not a monster, not like they want him to be-“

“Can you prove that? Beyond a shadow of a doubt?” She sighs. “Because that’s the only way he’s going to be able to get off with heavily supervised probation. More heavily supervised than Lang’s.”

“He’s a good man,” he swallows hard. “I /will/ prove it.”

She didn’t say anything to that, but she patted his arm gently before she turned to leave. After a little under a week on the feeding tube, they were able to take him off of it and start on small amounts of real food, and that sped up his recovery, though it still took close to three months. He finally could walk mostly on his own and- rather politely- told General Ross, Fury, and his doctor to stuff it when he finally walked out of the hospital floor in civvies, albeit with a temporary cane. The first thing he did when he got to the elevator was take it straight down to where they were keeping Bucky, leaning heavily on the cane as his knee protested being stood on.

The guards shied away from the hellfire in his gaze at one of them trying to protest, and he hobbled past on the warpath, ready to give anyone who got in his way what-for, but if there was anyone else down here, they avoided him like his righteous anger was an irritating sonar pulse. He came to a stop in front of the holding cell’s one glass wall, leaning heavily on the cane; Bucky is sitting on the bed, his back against the wall. No emotions register to Steve, and he sits, painfully slowly, in the chair that’s usually occupied by the many therapists, counselors, and legal advisors that came through, refraining from speaking for a long few moments.

“You really that old that they gotta give ya a cane, punk?” He can’t ignore the way his eyes sting at the rough timbre, and he offers a laugh.

“Tends to happen only after I get kidnapped by sociopaths who work for my life-long enemies.” He takes a second to breathe. “‘M working on getting you out.”

“They’re not gonna let me out, Stevie.” Bucky looks at him. “They want someone to pay.”

“That doesn’t mean shit and you know it, Barnes.”

“But it does when you’re the one in the hole.” He gives the blond a sad smile. “You look better...”

“Yeah, I guess...” He sighs. “You won’t be in here forever. I’m gonna get you out.”

“That a threat, Rogers? Ross might not like that-“

“Ross can sit on a cactus; it’s a God damned promise.” He looks at him with that same stubborn, heels digging in deep fire that used to have Bucky, his ma, and Mrs. Rogers lamenting that he’d wind up dead in an alley one day, and Bucky smiles a little more genuinely.

“I know, punk.” He sighs, closing his eyes. “I’m sorry I couldn’t get to you sooner...”

“Don’t start with that,” Steve shakes his head. “Don’t you dare, or I’ll bust this stupid window in just to kick your ass, James Buchanan.”

“You-“ the glare he gets says it all, or at least all of his frustration that had ever been there. “Not even all jacked up and in your prime would you be able to kick my ass, first of all. Second, I am sorry, Steven Grant; I-“ he stops, clenching his jaws just slightly, the way he would when something tore at him. “I know what they like to do, and I know that I’m the reason they went to extra lengths on you; I fought too much for them to run any risks with you. If I coulda got my hands on all of them and put them down, I would have. You didn’t deserve to go through that.”

“And you think you did?” Steve’s voice is hard and cold like arctic ice. “What I went through in six months is probably nothing to what you’ve been through in almost three fourths of a fucking century. You didn’t ask for it, and neither did I.”

“But you’re a good person, Steve; maybe a stupid one, but a good one nonetheless; I’m just a good soldier, and a good soldier is hardly a good person.”

“Bull-fuckin’-shit, and you know that.” Steve stands, hobbling to the glass and giving him a stern look. “You’re one of the best men I know; ain’t a damn sin either of us haven’t done. We’re two guys with bleeding histories and if that’s not enough to make me anything but a good man, then it’s certainly not enough to make you a bad man.”

Bucky shakes his head, laughing a little. “You’re somethin’ else, Rogers; always have been. Guess that’s why I always come back to you...”

The words make him run a little hotter, but it’s just as quickly replaced with a quiet, churning cold feeling that makes him almost sick. They sit in silence for a long moment, and then Bucky speaks again.

“Are you okay, Stevie? Like- really okay?” The brunet gives him a soft frown that always twists his heart into truthfulness. “You don’t look like you’ve slept...”

He takes a ragged breath, closing his eyes against the awful memories that welled up at his asking. “It’s... not been easy to fall asleep...” Not when he was expecting to wake up in pain, or with blood and semen gluing his thighs together, or for there to be a waiting group ready to ‘interrogate’ him again. “I can barely blink without it all just- wiping me out...”

Bucky nods slightly, closing his eyes and taking a deep, slow breath. “If I get out of here, I’ll make sure every last one of them dies for touching you...”

“You’re awfully possessive for someone who didn’t recognize me the last time he saw me...” He can’t help the wariness in his voice, watching the other with caution.

“I’m hardly the same person as then... I’ve gone through some... changes.” He flexes his hand, dropping his eyes. “It’s... Been a very big adjustment. They fucked up when they decided I was too fried to wipe anymore. But that kind of switch up comes at a price. Survival instinct or some shit. ‘S what the shrink said, anyway.”

Steve nods, rolling his eyes in annoyance as someone on the other side of the door pounded on it.

“Guess visitation’s over?” Bucky sounds reluctant.

“They can suck my dick. I’ll fucking camp in here if I want to.” He frowns at the door, then turns back to the other man. “They do anything to you?”

“Nah; too scared to do much, I guess. Just bring in meals and take the dishes back. More’n I ever got from Hydra or the Rooskies. Only having the one arm is a hassle, but-“ he shrugs. “Could be worse.”

“They’d have to deal with me, and anyone can tell you that I’m quite the asshole these days.”

Bucky smiles at him, and he can see the ghost of the boy he grew up with hiding in the shadows.

“You’ve always been quite the asshole, Stevie; part of your charm.” The smile sours as the guard pounded the door again and Steve coulda killed the idiot for ruining it, but that wouldn’t help any. He stood slowly and took a few steps away from the glass, looking at him solemnly. 

“We’ll get through this.”

“I know we will; I just hope it’s not too bad in the end. Don’t think I could take it if I lose anymore pieces.” Bucky laughs dryly.

The blast door swings shut behind Steve with a clang; Natasha is on the other side, falling into step with him on the way to the elevator.

They say nothing until the skyline of the city is almost gone behind the horizon on the way to the new compound.

“You have an idea yet for Halloween?” She looks at him, nothing in her voice or face giving away what she was asking after, but he knew.

“Working late, knowing Fury. I could use a hand.”

“You already know it’ll be us.” She laughs slightly, leaning back in her seat. “They’re saying the case is air tight.”

“I’ve broken him out of prison before.”

“When the governments of the world weren’t after him.”

“Doesn’t make a lick of difference.” He stares at the center line disappearing under the edge of the car. “I’m not letting him fucking sit and rot any longer. If it means putting myself on that list, then I’ll buy the nicest pen I can find.”


End file.
